45 A RE,POR TE,R AT LARGE, THE PANTHER.S AND THE- POLICE: A PA TTE-R.N OF GENOCIDE? B ETWEEN 4:40 and 4:52 A.M. on December 4, 1969, plain- clothes police in Chicago, while executing a search warrant for illegal weapons, shot to death Fred Hampton, the twenty-one-year-old chairman of the Black Panther Party of Illinois, and Mark Clark, a member of the Party, in Hampton's apartment. Four days later, at about the same hour of the morning, the Los Angeles Special Weapons Tac- tics Team, dressed in black jumpsuits and black hats, moved on the Black Panther Party headquarters in that city with another search warrant for illegal weapons and, in a heated gun battle, shot and seriously wounded three more Panthers. Commenting on these events, in San Francisco, Charles R. Garry, chief counsel and spokeslnan for the Black Panther Party, whose member- ship at the time was estimated at between eight hundred and twelve hundred, declared to the press that Hampton and Clark were "in fact the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth Panthers murdered by the police," and that the deaths and the raids were all "part and package of d national scheme by various dgencies of the government to destroy and commit genocide upon members of the Black Panther Party." Garry's assertion that twenty-eight members of the controversial black-mil- itan t group had been kIlled by the police was widely reported. On Decemher 7 and December 9, 1969, the New York Times reported a an established fact, without giving dny source for the figure or qualifying it in any way, that twenty-eight Panthers had been killed by police since January, 1968. (These stories were disseminated throughout the country to over three hundred newspapers and news agencies that subscribe to the Times wire service.) On December 9, 1969, the Washing- ton Post stated flatly, "A total of 28 Panthers have died in clashes with po- lice since January 1, 1 96 ." In a later artic]t:", the Post declared, "Between a dozen and 30 Panthers have been killed in these conft ontations." i\bout two hundred newspapers subsclibe to thl Post's wire service.) On the basis of what had been re- ported about the police kil1ing and pre- dawn raids, civil-rights leaders ex- pressed an understandable concern. l(()y Innis", director of the Congress fOl H.acial Equality, called for an im- lnediate investigation of "the death of 28 Black Panther members killed in clashes with the police since J an uary, 1968." Ralph Abernathy, who suc- ceeded Martin Luther King, Jr., as the chairman of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, attrihuted the death of Panther leaders to "a calcu- lated design of genocide in this coun- try." Julian Bond, a member of the Georgia state legIslature, said, "The Black Panthers are being decimated by political assassination arranged by the federal police apparatus." And Whit- ney 'yo oung, executive director of the National Urban League, urgently re- quested the Attorney General to con- vene federal grand juries in those "jurisdictions where nearly 30 Pan- thLrs have been murdered by law-en- forcement officIals." Garry's theory about "a national scheme . . . to destroy" the Black Pan- thers was also taken up by the press. Pointing to a "growing feeling (pdr- ticularly in the black communit)' )" that the "Federal Administration has had a hand in the recent wave of raids, arrests and shoot-outs," an article in the Times by John Kifner concluded that statements made by officials of the Nix- on Administration "appear to have at least contributed to a climate of opinion among local police. . that a virtual open season has been declared on the Panthers." Time reported, on Decem- ber 12, 1969, that "a series of gun bat- tles between Panthers and police throughout the nation" amounted to a "lethal undeclared war," and conclud- ed, "Whether or not there is a con- certed police campaign, the ranks of P an the r leadership have been decimated in the past two years." In the very next issue, Time, repeating Garry's claim that "28 Panthers hdve died in police gunfire," asked, "Specifically, are the raids against Panther offices part of a 5]] lll f1 "'- :> ; ";......:-) A A. ì : , :' 'f' ' <I'.';":: . ;f' t û "' .._" _ 'F . "......>; "1 .;" ......f i . ^( )i i , . , 1 ': ;(; ;:" ;;;iiiiiii-;ïiiii - !!!!'" t.Q. - T c:/V'V- national design to destroy the Panther leadership?" The answer was more or less left open. That Sàme week, N ews- week began a news report entitled "Too Late for the Panthers?" with the same question: "Is there some sort of government conspiracy afoot to ex- terminate the Black Panthers?" The article then proceeded to portray a "guerrilla war between the gun-toting Panthers and the police," in which the Panther "hierarchy around the country has been '111 hut decimated over the past vedl," and concluded that "there is no doubt that the police around the nation have made the Panthers a prime target in the past two years..." A few weeks later, Newsweek reported that "the cop on the beat has been joined by Attorney General John Mitchell's J us- tice Department, which helieve the Panthers to be a menace to national "ecurity and ha accordlngly escalated the drive against them" -a drive that "has taken a fearful toll of the Pan- thers." The Washington Post, notIng in an editorial that the "carnage has been terrible" in the "urban guerrilla warfare" between Panthers and police, concluded that "recent events" had given "added currency" to the Panther charge that "there is a national cam- paign under way to eradicate them by any means, legal or extra-legal." Pick- ing up the theme in his syndicated col- umn, Carl T Rowan observed, "\Ve have seen this nationally orchestrated police campaign to turn the guns on the Panthers and wipe them out," and re- ferred to an "obvious conspiracy of po- lice actions across the country that has produced the alleged killings of 28 Black Panthers." The Nation, in an editorial titled "Marked for Extinc- tion," asserted, "It is becoming increas- ingly apparent that a campaign of re- pression and assassination is being carried out against the Black Pan- thers." Even a paper as cautious as the Christian Scit>nce Monitor, after a tele- phone interview with Garry, cited the Panther charge of "police murder" and "genocide" and expressed "a growing suspicion that something more than iso- lated local police action was involved " C ONFUSION about the alleged murders began to set in early, and on December 21, 1969, the Times re- ported that Garry had put the number of Panthers killed by the police at twelve, although it later returned to the figure of twenty-eight. \Vhile an Asso-